The struggle for the farmhouse at Hougoumont, Waterloo 1815 / handpaintedsoldiers.com
The battle that brought the Napoleonic Wars to a much awaited end took place around 18 June, 1815. Those involved in the bloody conflict were French, Prussian, Belgian, Dutch and British. The battle takes its name from a small Belgian village that stands nearby. (more…)
is a country more than twice the size of Spain on the north coast of the great land mass of Africa, bounded by Tunisia and Algeria to the west, Niger and Chad to the south, and Egypt to the east. The only truly arable part is near the coast at Tripolitania, where the climate is Mediterranean. Inland the ground rises to a desert of limestone rock. The north-west region dominated by Cyrenaica is high tableland, lightly-wooded. To the south, the grown is low and mostly sand, though oases can be found. The south of the country lies within the Sahara Desert: to the west, however in the Fezzan region, there are large oases in otherwise naked, stony plains and scrub-covered hills. (more…)
The statue of the Founder / touriststamps.co.uk
Eton is not only the name of the best-known school in the world; it is also historical, in that it was founded by a king. Henry VI, the physically weak and sick son of the hero of Agincourt Henry V, founded the college in October, 1440. The school has just passed its 570th anniversary. Obviously, it is one of the oldest established places of education in Britain, and the world. I believe the oldest is St. Albans, founded for poor boys in the 11th century: I will probably be corrected. (more…)
“Remember, remember/ The Fifth of November /Gunpower, Treason and Plot/ I see no reason/ Why gunpowder treason/ Should ever be forgot!”
The finding and arrest of Guy Fawkes / lookand learn.com
This traditional comic verse, in progressive modern times sadly forgotten (if they ever knew it) by English children, is four hundred years old. It commemorates a Catholic plot to assassinate King James I of England (and VI of Scotland) with his entire Parliament at the State Opening on 5 November, 1605. (more…)
The Great Fire that extinguished the Plague / answers.com
Bubonic plague had recurred often in the Europe of the Middle Ages. Thought to have been spread by ship-going rats (themselves immune) the plague hit London and south-East England worse in the period 1664/1665 than at any other time in previous centuries. (more…)
Mussolini when he was super-popular / taringa.net
The future dictator of Italy was born at Forli (Romagna) in 1883. His father was a blacksmith, his mother a schoolteacher. Before he was twenty Benito himself became a schoolmaster, but when threatened with military service he moved to Switzerland (1902), where this intelligent and well-spoken man became a manual labourer. (more…)
The most popular portrait of Richard, playing with his sovereign’s ring / simple.wikipedia.org
William Shakespeare usually wrote his History plays with careful regard for the facts. He read Polydore Virgil, Edmund Hall, Holinshed and other historians before putting historical events into theatrical plays written to attract a large public to his theatre. In one play, however, Shakespeare appears to have taken the written words of saints like Thomas More into his scheme of things without investigation or doubt. More wrote history to suit King Henry VII’s pleasure. After all, the first Tudor (q.v.) had usurped a usurper’s throne, but the less said about that the better. (more…)
A bit of Romance does no-one any harm, and the story of Roland, his famous horn, and the conflict at Roncesvalles is the very stuff of medieval romance.
777 B.C. Several Muslim ambassadors present themselves at Paderborn in Saxony, to have words with Charlemagne. (more…)
The infamous, and terminally sick Judge Jeffries / en.m.wikipedia.org
The Duke of Monmouth’s revolt was a bloody insurrection, needlessly causing the deaths of soldiery and ordinary working folk in the British West Country in 1685. The so-called Glorious Revolution occurred only three years later in 1688/89. The connection is, as it was so often in European history – religion: religion and personal ambition.
The rebellion of the young Duke of Monmouth was made against his own uncle. King James II was the younger brother of Charles II, the Merry Monarch, who had, himself, spent half his life in exile following the murder by Parliament of his father Charles I.
Octavian, adopted son of Julius Caesar / blog.iese.edu
Many rulers of Rome have names so obscure the average student is ignorant of them. On the other hand names like Julius Caesar, Hadrian, Tiberius, Caligula and especially that of the first Emperor, Augustus Caesar, have rung down the centuries like so many turbulent bells.
Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus was born sixty-three years before the birth of Christ, and died fourteen years after the Crucifixion. (more…)